New West Notes

Stylishly attired in a gray Armani suit with black crewneck shirt, Vladimir Putin campaigns for his United Russia Party in advance of Sunday’s national parliamentary elections. His message sounds a bit ominous, don’t you think?

** NEW RUSSIAN AIR DEFENSE SYSTEM PLACED IN PRODUCTION, WITH ORDERS ALREADY FROM THE MIDDLE EAST. On the eve of Russia’s national election weekend, the Russian military has announced the beginning of production of the Pantsir-S1 missile air defense system. Russian sources boast that it is the most advanced short-range air defense system in the world.

They say it will become “the Kalashnikov of air defense systems,” referring to the legendary assault rifle that has become a standard of militaries around the world on account of its effectiveness, durability, and relative ease of use.

With this air defense system in place, say the Russians, the mysterious air strike inside Syria carried out earlier this fall by the Israeli Air Force, which some conservative sources say was against a nuclear site, would have been impossible. Several Middle Eastern nations have already ordered the Pantsir, which will be available late next year. Including, naturally, Syria. No word about Iran.

** TROUBLE FOR ORANGE COUNTY SHERIFF. Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona, on leave of absence after being indicted on multiple federal counts of using public office to enrich himself, has come under renewed fire from a retired sheriff’s lieutenant who says Carona passed out police badges and concealed weapons permits to 80 to 90 of his cronies and political supporters. This is a charge that has been leveled before about Carona’s controversial reserve deputy program. But this fellow says Carona had him devise a quick training program of a few weeks to justify the badging and weapons. Only to essentially dispense with it in order to dole out the goodies.

** CLINTON CAMPAIGN OFFICE HOSTAGE DRAMA ENDS PEACEFULLY. That hostage drama at Hillary Clinton’s Rochester, New Hampshire campaign office reported below has ended peacefully. The obvious disturbed man, who said he’d been drinking for 72 hours and was distraught about a domestic violence case, released his three hostages and was taken into custody. He had demanded to talk to the New York senator, whose campaign schedule was disrupted for the afternoon while the situation played out.

** PAKISTAN CRISIS: OPPOSITION SPLIT OVER ELECTIONS, NEW ARMY CHIEF REPLACES MUSHARRAF LOYALISTS. More seemingly dizzying developments in America’s key frontline ally in the Terror War, the only Islamic nuclear power. While ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, returned from exile in a deal with the Saudis, says that he and a coalition of secular opposition groups will boycott January elections now set to take place only three weeks after the lifting of martial law, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto says that she and her Pakistan People’s Party will participate, under protest.

Meanwhile, new army chief of staff General Afshaq Kayani, former director of the dread ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) — one-time military attache to Bhutto — is replacing army corps commanders and top intelligence officials loyal to Musharraf with new commanders. Musharraf finally stepped down, as long promised, as head of the military this week.

It’s possible that Bhutto will emerge as the only electoral figure with fresh legitimacy from elections tarred with the shadow of martial law. Should Musharraf’s legitimacy take another big hit, Kayani and a set of new commanders are in the wings.

But Bhutto could prove to be a very problematic civilian face for a new administration. She has baited the Islamic jihadists in the past, nearly losing her life in a spectacular terrorist bombing of her homecoming procession this fall, and she is a woman.

** HILLARY SLIDES IN PREVIOUSLY FAVORABLE AMERICAN RESEARCH GROUP POLLS. I’ve come to consider the American Research Group polls as sometime outliers in the presidential race, frequently higher than other polls for Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side, and for John McCain on the Republican side. Now ARG is showing Barack Obama with a sliver-thin lead in Iowa, and closing in New Hampshire. Hillary is down 10 points among women in Iowa. Though she continues, in this poll, to have a big lead in South Carolina, whereas Clinton and Obama are evenly matched in other polling.

On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee is the man on the move. He’s tied for the lead in Iowa with Mitt Romney, up to third in New Hampshire, behind Romney and Giuliani, and close to a three-way statistical dead heat in South Carolina with the other two. Huckabee is up 13 points in South Carolina over the past month, with Fred Thompson sliding to fourth.

** ODD HOSTAGE CRISIS AT CLINTON CAMPAIGN OFFICE. An unidentified man with a bomb strapped to his body has taken at least two hostages in Hillary Clinton’s Rochester, New Hampshire office. The nearby offices for Barack Obama and John Edwards have been evacuated. The man says he wants to speak to Senator Clinton, who has cancelled her afternoon appearance. The Clinton campaign issued this terse statement: “There is an ongoing situation in our Rochester, NH office. We are in close contact with state and local authorities and are acting at their direction. We will release additional details as appropriate.”

** MANY MOVES AROUND RUSSIAN ELECTIONS THIS WEEKEND. On Sunday, Russia, now interjecting itself once again around the world, holds its national parliamentary elections. This morning President Vladimir Putin signed legislation withdrawing Russia from the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty.

Heading the list of candidates from the ruling United Russia party for the Duma, as the parliament is known, is President Vladimir Putin. Polls show Putin and United Russia way out front, as you might have guessed, with about 66% of the vote. The Communist Party is running a very distant second, with 14%. The Liberal Democrats, a misnomer, given that the party is headed by nationalist extremist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and Fair Russia are the only other parties deemed likely to win seats in the parliament. Neither of those parties look like real opposition parties. Putin had the threshold for party representation raised from 5% to 7%.

Democratic reformers, such as those with the 1990s era Democratic Russia, with which I once worked, have, as you can see, essentially disappeared from the scene. They are either subsumed by Putin and United Russia, out of politics, or disqualified by party representation requirements.

Russian police recently arrested hundreds of opposition figures protesting against the administration, including former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, leader of a group called Other Russia.

Europe’s main security watchdog, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which represents dozens of European countries, pulled out of election monitoring in Russia after complaining that Russian authorities were interfering with their plans, denying visas to needed workers. Putin responded by declaring that the US, trying to discredit Russia, was behind the OSCE pull-out, and worked to get election monitors from other sources, such as the former Soviet states and friendly Europeans.

All these moves are intriguing because, as best as can be made out, Putin is actually quite popular in Russia. His domination over the media is obviously a big part of that, but that control is now a given in the situation. Election monitors are not needed to report that.

Putin taps into deep popular feelings around stability, authority, material insecurity and aspiration, and renewed national pride. Here’s the translated lyric to a United Russia campaign song I saw recently, performed by pretty young women in hot pants: “I want a boyfriend like Putin. Someone who’s strong, who doesn’t drink, and who won’t run away.”

Under Putin’s leadership, Russia has swiftly rebounded from its post-Soviet nadir under Boris Yeltsin, who made Putin his spymaster and then prime minister. Rebellions in Chechnya and Dagestan have been put down, forcibly and brutally. With the Russian Federation’s internal security restored, Russia under Putin’s leadership has forcefully reasserted itself on the global stage.

At first, Putin and President George W. Bush hit it off, though Bush is surrounded by longtime anti-Russians such as Vice President Dick Cheney. Russia was a crucial ally to the US in the post-9/11 period, providing essential help in the takedown of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, assisting US intelligence with its long history of fighting Islamic movements, allowing the establishment of US bases in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

But Russia parted ways with the US over the invasion of Iraq, citing the threat to regional stability posed by the end of the Saddam regime and consequent emboldening of Iran, an historic rival of Russia’s. And the US bases in Central Asia have faded to one, in mountainous Kyrgyzstan, as US moves to expand NATO to Russia’s borders have continued.

With the Bush/Putin alliance faltering over Iraq and what Russia sees as continued encroachment in its “near abroad” — the latest iteration of which is the proposed US anti-missile shield in Eastern Europe — Russia has taken on a much more aggressive stance in global affairs.

Russia is one of the great powers in the world in fossil fuels. It carries great sway with other major oil producers. It’s a crucial supplier of energy to the rest of Europe. No other great power in the world has benefited as has Russia with the record run-up in oil prices. In that sense, Bush’s invasion of Iraq and subsequent saber-rattling with Iran, has generated a risk premium in crude oil that actually boosts Russia on the world stage.

Now Russia, with its aircraft, technology, and, most important, armaments industries revitalized, is on a selling expedition around the world, returning to the former Soviet Union’s old role of joining the US as one of the two leading arms dealers on the planet.

Russia is involved in most every geostrategic area of interest to the US. From possibly selling submarines to Venezuela and Brazil, a coming world oil power, to providing a security backstop to Iran, to interjecting itself into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — a peace conference may be on tap, in Moscow — to much more.

And what of Putin in all this, the seemingly essential man, whose presidential term is about to run out under Russia’s constitution? No one has declared for president, even though the deadline to do so is only weeks away. We’ll see about the size of his electoral mandate, flawed though it will be, on Sunday before his moves become clear. One good bet is that he’s not retiring from politics. Nor about to settle for being a mere member of parliament.

Not that you’re getting any of this from YouTube debates, cable news chat, the bitter sniping between the extremes of the blogosphere, or the conventional concerns of the conventional media.

Incidentally, Russian immigrants in New York, California and elsewhere are voting in this election.

With Russia awash in new wealth from record oil prices, some
of its nouveau riche gathered in Moscow for the Millionaire Fair.

** QUICK HITS. With Arnold Schwarzenegger getting all the press for his role in voluntary agreements from four big mortgage lenders to freeze interest rates on troubled subprime loans, the California Assembly wants a special session to deal with a number of bills its Democratic members are proposing. But President Bush might trump everyone with a move to get national lenders to freeze the situation. … California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez ventures to Iowa this weekend on behalf of Hillary Clinton, for whom he serves as a national campaign co-chairman. Nunez will represent Clinton at the Iowa Brown & Black Forum in Des Moines on Saturday night, where the former first lady joins Barack Obama, John Edwards, and the rest of the field in addressing Latino and African American issues. Interesting, given how white the Iowa electorate is. … San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, citing the problem illegal immigrants have in getting drivers licenses, has okayed a plan to grant them city ID cards. This won’t help San Francisco’s image with Fox News.

** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.

You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.

While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.

** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Crude oil prices have dropped again, now trading in a range of $88 to $89 per barrel. This is the fourth day of declines in the oil market. Saudi Arabia has increased its production to the highest level this year. Record oil prices have negatively impacted the US and global economies.

Your posts are welcome in the Forum.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, announcing martial law
on November 3rd, today said he will end it on December 16th.

** QUICK HITS. The man on the move in the Republican presidential race, Mike Huckabee, campaigns for the next three days in New Hampshire. Now tied for the lead in Iowa, the former Arkansas governor goes next to the other early state that had been ceded to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Huckabee’s schedule is one of extensive retail campaigning. … Last night’s Republican debate on CNN was the most watched presidential primary debate ever on cable news. … Hillary Clinton, in California today, visited the Saddleback Christian church in Orange County for its annual AIDS summit, as Barack Obama did last year. She also picked up the endorsement of noted environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., son of the late New York senator. Which is interesting, given the rumor going around that Uncle Ted is going to endorse Obama. … California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, who says he is now in charge of the campaign against the term limits revision initiative, told the San Diego Union Tribune editorial board today that he doesn’t know who the contributors are behind the $1.5 million from the DC-based US Term Limits outfit. The group refuses to divulge its contributors.

** ABC SAYS GIULIANI HAD NYPD PROVIDE TAXI SERVICE TO THEN GIRLFRIEND/FUTURE WIFE. This doesn’t look promising for the national Republican frontrunner. In addition to yesterday’s report that the cost of then New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s security services during his Hamptons visits to then girlfriend Judy Nathan were allocated to obscure city agencies such as the loft board, ABC reports that Giuliani had New York police officers ferry her around the city. I believe he was still married at the time.

It’s arguable to use public resources in this way for a spouse or other family member. This is much more problematic.

** MUSHARRAF SAYS HE’LL END PAKISTAN MARTIAL LAW, BUT MANY WILL BOYCOTT ELECTION. President Pervez Musharraf, no longer head of the army, has been sworn in as civilian president of Pakistan. He swiftly announced that he will end the effective state of martial law he imposed on November 3rd. On December 16th. Which is barely three weeks before the national election he reinstated for January 8th.

Not much time to campaign freely, assuming that could actually happen. So former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, returned from exile in a deal with Saudis, and an alliance of opposition parties say they will boycott the election. Sharif says he will meet with former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, also returned from exile, whose short-lived alliance with Musharraf ended when he declared martial law and had her arrested. Bhutto and her party might participate in the election.

And a murky situation in America’s key frontline ally in the Terror War — which nonetheless allows the harboring of top Al Qaeda leaders — which stands also as the only Islamic nuclear power, has just gotten murkier.

** BIN LADEN WARNS EUROPE TO GET OUT OF AFGHANISTAN. In his latest tape, aired this morning on Al Jazeera, Osama bin Laden advises European countries to withdraw their forces on Afghanistan. Al Qaeda can probably make a lot of trouble for Western European countries. Too bad that, six years after 9/11, we still haven’t gotten Osama and other top Al Qaeda leaders.

** A POST-DEBATE TEMPEST. Well, since I wrote early this morning about the Republican presidential debate on CNN, CNN’s handling of things has become the latest cause celebre of the conservative blogosphere. Plug into Michelle Malkin’s site to feel the rage.

More Republicans noticed what I wrote about, that the videos selected by CNN producers reflected kind of a wacky party, and are complaining about it. But the big thing is about how a few more of the questioners, in addition to the minor Clinton campaign official I mentioned earlier, turn out to be Democrats. Another embarrassment for CNN after its embarrassing handling of the Democratic debate in Vegas.

The questions last night were mostly pretty generic. You’d think with 5000 YouTube video questions they could find people who wouldn’t be tracked down by avidly clicking blogospheric sleuths as Democrats to pose much the same question.

Mitt Romney talks in last night’s Republican debate about how he
used to be “pro-choice” on abortion and is now “pro-life.”

** REPUBLICANS DEBATE. In a race that has become less and less clearcut, one thing for sure emerged from last night’s Republican presidential debate in Florida. Anderson Cooper did a much better job as moderator than Wolf Blitzer did with the Democrats in Las Vegas.

Cooper, you see, for all his chronic twittiness as an anchor, actually allowed the candidates to debate (and to keep the flow going amidst the ensuing potential chaos). Which means to engage with one another, and not merely deliver bland, pre-programmed bitelets.

It was a night for Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney to continue what may be a fateful tango of hostility. And for Mike Huckabee to demonstrate exactly why he is the candidate of the political surge.

I think Romney and his handlers made a mistake. His biggest problem is Huckabee, who is in the process of hollowing out his candidacy. He’s doing that in two ways, by proving to have a powerful appeal as an authentic, not situational, social conservative. And by taking at least a share of the lead in Iowa, which had been ceded to Romney for months. If Romney loses Iowa, his entire strategic sequence is thoroughly disrupted. He doesn’t have the built-in national appeal of Giuliani, which may be the ex-New York mayor’s ultimate strength in the big state primaries down the line in the contest.

As many of you know, I love YouTube. But think the YouTube debates are pure gimmickry. From that standpoint, this one was less irritating than the first such, among the Democrats. But let’s face it. When you have 5000 YouTube video questions submitted by viewers — that’s more than the Democrats got — and there is no public vote on the questions to be asked, it’s entirely up to the producers what gets on the air.

So what got on the air managed to ignore mainstream issues like health care and the environment — not to mention any discussion of geostrategic issues beyond bumper sticker thought — while spending the first 35 minutes of the debate on illegal immigration.

Quite a few of the video questions selected positioned the Republican Party well to the right of mainstream America. Gun fetishists, Confederate flag enthusiasts, Biblical literalists, and so on. For the record, I’m a gun owner (unlike a couple of the Republicans on that stage), don’t have a Confederate flag (descended from pre-Civil War Virginians), and consider the Bible essentially allegorical.

Now, it may well be that that is a fair reflection of the party. Checking around the conservative blogosphere, I don’t see any complaints about the video selection subtly biasing a mainstream audience against their party. Instead, what complaints there were, and there weren’t many, centered on the latest CNN mistake of allowing a Clinton operative into its pool. In this case, a retired brigadier general from Santa Rosa, California — who identified himself as a Log Cabin Republican — complaining about the don’t ask/don’t tell policy on gays and lesbians in the military. Turns out he’s one of dozens of co-chairs of Veterans for Hillary.

** ONE POLL INDICATES HUCKABEE DEBATE VICTORY. This poll by Insider Advantage of Republican voters in Iowa and Florida shows a clearcut victory by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee in last night’s Republican presidential debate in St. Petersburg, Florida.

** CALIFORNIA PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES AT THE END OF JANUARY. Although next month’s Democratic presidential debate on CBS has been cancelled due to the Writers Guild strike, there will be debates here prior to the early California presidential primary on February 5th. CNN is set to host Republican and Democratic debates on January 30th and January 31st.

** SCHWARZENEGGER SUB-PRIME MORTGAGE LIVE WEBCAST THIS MORNING. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who as widely reported in the press has worked with lenders to stabilize interest rates and prevent some future foreclosures, meets with business and local leaders in Riverside this morning and holds a press conference to discuss the crisis. The event will be webcast live at 9:40 AM.

** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.

You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.

While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.

** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Crude oil prices have dropped again, now trading in a range of $91 to $93 per barrel. This is the third day of declines in the oil market. Saudi Arabia has increased its production to the highest level this year. Record oil prices have negatively impacted the US and global economies.

Your posts are welcome in the Forum.

Evangelical conservative Mike Huckabee, the man on the move
in the Republican race, is finding his conservatism challenged.

** SOUTH CAROLINA POLL: CLINTON AND OBAMA TIED AMONG DEMOCRATS, ROMNEY AND THOMPSON TIED AMONG REPUBLICANS. Clemson University’s new Palmetto Poll of the early South Carolina presidential primary shows Hillary Clinton sliding back into a statistical dead heat with Barack Obama on the Democratic side and Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson in a similar dead heat on the Republican side, with Mike Huckabee surging into a close third place and Rudy Giuliani dropping.

On the Democratic side, it’s Clinton 19%, Obama 17%, and John Edwards 12%. No one else is in double digits.

On the Republican side, it’s Romney 17%, Thompson 15%, Mike Huckabee 13%, John McCain 11%, and Giuliani 9%.

Over half the Republican sample is 55 or older. 97% are white. The Democratic sample has a slight majority of blacks over whites, with 60% women. Both parties have huge undecided votes.

** LOS ANGELES DEBATE CANCELLED. Next month’s Democratic presidential debate in Los Angeles is being cancelled by the Democratic National Committee on account of uncertainty surrounding the Writers Guild strike and the debate’s broadcast status on CBS. There are no plans to reschedule it.

** AN IMPROVING SITUATION WITH IRAN? President Bush met yesterday with Iran’s leading ally in Iraqi politics, Shiite leader Abdel Aziz Al–Hakim. The pro-Iranian leader has not raised objections to Bush’s plan to maintain an ongoing US troop presence in Iraq when the bulk of American forces are withdrawn.

As previously reported, the US released nine Iranian agents captured in Iraq. And US officials have noted that the flow of arms from Iran into Iraq has decreased.

** BROWN SUES BUSH ADMINISTRATION ON TOXIC DISCLOSURE. Former Governor-turned-Attorney General Jerry Brown this morning sued the US Environmental Protection Agency for its decision to relax its Toxic Release Inventory. Brown, who was joined by 11 other states in the lawsuit, says the federal government is “subverting a key public safety measure.”

The Toxic Release Inventory requires annual reports of the release of toxic chemicals by refineries, chemical plants, and other manufacturing facilities.

Charging the federal government with “subverting a key public safety measure,” California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. today sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for allowing companies to hide information about toxic chemicals at thousands of facilities around the United States.

Under the new rules, says Brown, some 5,300 facilities around the country could be permitted to conceal information from the Environmental Protection Agency about toxic chemical levels and management of toxic waste. The new regulations, he says, increase by a factor of 10 the quantity of chemical waste that a facility can generate without providing detailed reports.

Joining Brown and California in the lawsuit are Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and Vermont.

** HUCKABEE’S SURGE IN IOWA MATCHED BY SURGE IN CRITICISM OF HIM. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is now tied with Mitt Romney in a new private poll of the Iowa Republican presidential caucuses. Romney had long held a big lead in the first-in-the-nation contest. Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson are way behind both of them.

But Huckabee’s new eminence in the field is matched by a new effort to show that he’s not really a conservative. Though he is in fact the clearest social conservative in the field. Conservative columnist Bob Novak, laying out the case for his allies, scores Huckabee for raising some taxes, spending money on social programs, criticizing free trade, and backing a cap & trade program on greenhouse gases.

Huckabee is campaigning as a conservative, but serious Republicans know that he is a high-tax, protectionist, big-government advocate of a strong hand in the Oval Office directing the lives of Americans. Until now, they did not bother to expose the former governor of Arkansas as a false conservative because he seemed an underfunded, unknown nuisance candidate. Now that he has pulled even with Mitt Romney for the Iowa caucuses with the possibility of more progress, the beleaguered Republican Party has a frightening problem on its hands.

Huckabee clearly departs from the mainstream of the conservative movement in his confusion of “growth” with “greed.” Such ad hominem attacks are part of his intuitive response to criticism from the Club for Growth and the libertarian Cato Institute for his record as governor. On Fox News Sunday Nov. 18, he called the “tactics” of the Club for Growth “some of the most despicable in politics today. It’s why I love to call them the Club for Greed because they won’t tell you who gave their money.” In fact, all contributors to the organization’s political action committee (which produces campaign ads) are publicly revealed, as are most donors financing issue ads.

Better not tell Chuck Norris he’s fronting a dangerous socialist.

** REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE TONIGHT. The Republican presidential field debates tonight at 5 PM Pacific time. It’s a two-hour debate in Florida, on CNN, featuring questions posed by citizens via You Tube. This is the debate scheduled for September that some Republicans decided not to do, with Mitt Romney saying he didn’t want to answer questions “from a snow man.” The candidates since changed their minds, since the field is so unsettled and there is a great deal of pressure for it to be sorted out.

** SCHWARZENEGGER IN PRIVATE DISCUSSIONS. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in private meetings and conversations in LA today, perhaps in the state house south known as Oak Productions. (His movie production company.) He’s still trying to get a deal on universal health care, with a state Assembly session scheduled for next week.

** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.

You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.

While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.

** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Crude oil is trading in a range of $94 to $95 per barrel. This is the second day of declines in the oil market. Saudi Arabia has increased its production to the highest level this year.

Your posts are welcome in the Forum.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger delivers his November 2006
victory speech at the Beverly Hilton in this NWN video.

As November slides to December and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s very expansive agendas on water and, especially, health care reform, remain yet unrealized, some eyes turn to incrementalism. Which brings up the man Schwarzenegger replaced in the dramatic 2003 California recall, former Governor Gray Davis.

Davis, and he says so himself, prided himself on “incrementalism.” Yet he is a fan of Schwarzenegger, and the two today are friends. “He thinks,” says the Democrat elected twice as governor, once as lieutenant governor, and twice as state controller after serving four years in the Assembly and nearly seven years as then Governor Jerry Brown’s chief of staff, “really big.” In contrast, says the native New Yorker who nonetheless dreamed of being governor of California, “I thought in smaller steps. I didn’t want to scare people.”

Schwarzenegger doesn’t mind “scaring people.” He thinks of it as inspiring them. But he’s pushed all year long for a universal health care plan based on a market system, which would require every Californian to buy health insurance which is not price regulated. Implicit contradictions have, not surprisingly, led to a somewhat Rube Goldberg-like construct which has remained tantalizingly close to fruition yet out of reach for months now. Notwithstanding Schwarzenegger’s many pronouncements to the contrary.

Schwarzenegger was advised by, as the saying goes, some people months ago to push hard for a huge result then settle for something historic yet manageable. Like health care for all children in California, and an end to denial of health care coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. The latter is something that Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines has said repeatedly that he could get behind.

Schwarzenegger has chosen not to do that, and the Christmas shopping season is now upon us.

Former Governor Gray Davis wryly discusses Schwarzenegger, the recall, California’s chronic economic and budget woes, and Jerry Brown in this NWN video.

None of which is to say that the former action superstar has not had major successes. On infrastructure, workers compensation reform, renewable energy, climate change, crisis management, and so on.

One area where he has had less success — and this is something very familiar to Davis, since it was one of a few things which cost him his governorship — is the state’s budget.

Both Schwarzenegger and Davis were confronted by two fairly intractable elements when they assumed their governorships. An ultra-government faction in state politics, and an anti-government faction.

Davis saw this very clearly when he won his landslide election as governor in 1998. He told me not long after that he recognized the pent-up demand among Democratic constituency groups, notably public employee unions, for massive new government spending programs that had built up in the 16 years following the last Democratic administration under Jerry Brown. And that he would choose largely to resist these demands. Because he could not be sure that the burgeoning dot-com boom of that time would continue.

Indeed, Davis, who was flown about the state on Gulfstream jets chartered by organized labor during his devastation of right-wing Republican Dan Lungren, was immediately confronted with a lengthy labor wish list after he became governor. Which he mostly blew off. Then. But he later acceded to a number of programs, both spending sought by the ultra-government faction and tax cuts sought by the anti-government faction.

Later, when Davis had become vulnerable following the electric power crisis of 2000 and 2001, he was confronted by still more demands even as the state sunk into a deepening fiscal crisis. The Latino Legislative Caucus declared that it would produce an alternative budget.

I asked him what he thought of the notion. He replied that he thought little of it, since it would never happen. And indeed it did not. Just as the unhappy far right of today takes fiscal pot shots but offers no solutions, the unhappy far left of that time failed to put up as promised.

What turned out to be Davis’s final budget, in 2003, called for a balance of major cuts and tax increases. But what transpired was what he mostly expected, what then Senate leader John Burton called a “get out of town budget.”

The Democrats balked at cuts. The Republicans balked at taxes. And what had become a truly massive crisis rolled on.

Enter Arnold Schwarzenegger. The action superstar, fresh off the launch of the global megahit Terminator 3, took care not to take an anti-tax pledge, though he provided many anti-tax atmospherics. He told me that he did not like taxes but did not want to fence himself in.

And indeed he did not. As he discussed his first budget, Schwarzenegger left open the possibility of a temporary tax increase. Which led to no little consternation amongst the anti-government faction that was loudest in Republican ranks, including some among what turned out ultimately to be a notably failed crew of staffers and advisors.

When Schwarzenegger came in, he had an historic opportunity to confront the two dysfunctional extremes of California politics. The ultra-government faction, which sees a governmental solution even to problems which do not actually exist. (Think smoking on the beach.) And the anti-government faction, which in the words of the godfather to the current faction narrowly running the state Republican Party, Grover Norquist, wants to drown government in a bathtub.

The dynamics of the recall impelled Schwarzenegger to cut the unpopular car tax and then seek a way to make constitutional the massive deficit borrowing already approved by Davis and a bipartisan majority of the Legislature. He did both.

But having done those politically necessary things, he could then have moved forward with a temporary tax increase — to make up for the car tax cut, without which there would be little structural deficit problem today — and the California Perfomance Review (CPR), which sought long-term efficiencies throughout government.

Instead, he ultimately decided against both. And I will write about this at greater length in the future.

When I wrote in 2004 that the California Performance Review was behind schedule, Schwarzenegger protested. He told me: “I am going to blow up the boxes (of government, as he’d promised in his State of the State address). And you may be in one of those boxes!”

But he did in fact back away, with the CPR program a victim of an internal fight. All of it between Republicans, as it happens. And the great conservative Republicans, such as Tom McClintock and the like, had little if anything to say about it.

All of which makes Davis, who has a highly informed and rather sardonic view of California government, rather amused.

Your posts are welcome in the Forum.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had a limited hand
to play today at Annapolis during the Middle East peace talks.

** ANNAPOLIS AFTERMATH: MORE TALK. After laboring mightily to bring top officials from 44 nations — including Saudi Arabia and Syria (now subject to protests from increasingly isolated Iranian radicals for its participation) — to the highly picturesque capital of Maryland and home of the U.S. Naval Academy, the Bush Administration has it product. A restart to stalled negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Just one slight problem. A huge faction of Palestianians, who control much of the area granted the Palestinian Authority, i.e., Hamas, are not part of the equation. But there are saving graces. Annapolis, at the top of the Chesapeake Bay, perhaps the best bay in America for sailing as it’s far larger than San Francisco Bay, has the best crab in the world, wonderful cobblestone streets, and the history-drenched U.S. Naval Academy campus (“the Yard,” as it’s actually known), where the conference was hosted. This brought delight to the delegates. If nothing else.

** A COMMENT. I’m looking at all the press releases, columnizing, blogs, articles, etc. collecting — or is it congealing? — in my system. And I must say that it is largely a collection of blithering, divisive, pre-programmed junk.

** AN UNWELCOME SURPRISE FOR STEVE POIZNER. California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, who has seized on the not especially dramatic campaign against the term limits revision initiative on the February ballot as a way to become more popular with right-wing Republicans who would otherwise eschew the candidacy of an Al Gore for President backer for their party’s gubernatorial nomination in 2010, is about to be challenged on a fundamental question of openness. One of his newfound allies, the rather shadowy DC-based US Term Limits group, which has been the principal funder thusfar of the campaign against the term limits revision measure, refuses to divulge its contributors. Poizner, who has declared himself the new head of the campaign, will be challenged to divulge the money men behind the US Term Limits contributions.

** JESSE JACKSON INTERJECTS. Rev. Jesse Jackson has an op-ed piece in today’s Chicago Sun-Times that could be trouble for Barack Obama. The two-time presidential candidate of the 1980s has endorsed Obama, but his public statements have mostly caused the Illinois senator trouble.

Jackson has criticized Obama for not focusing enough on African American issues, at one point seeming to say that Obama isn’t black enough. Which may be literally true, since Obama is actually mixed race. Now Jackson is saying that only John Edwards has adequately addressed black issues.

When Jackson ran for president, he ran as the candidate of the left and as the candidate of identity politics. That’s a way to get a chunk of votes. But it’s not a way to win, and Jackson never had a serious chance of becoming president. Obama is running for president.

Jackson is perhaps the most prominent member of an older generation of black leaders, now being passed over by Obama, which is probably more comfortable with Bill Clinton, “the first black president.” Jackson’s always been tied into the mainline of the national Democratic Party. For as long as I can remember, he’s gotten a jet and an expense account for the general election.

As Jackson well knows, there aren’t many black voters in Iowa, where Obama is making his move, and where Jackson himself was a non-player in his two presidential runs.

This looks like a way to presssure Obama to do something that won’t help him win Iowa when that has to be his principal focus. As well as a way for Jackson to create a pretext to criticize a candidate he supposedly supports.

** SCHWARZENEGGER ON NON-DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger kicked off the USC Annenberg School’s conference on the emerging digital infrastructure with a talk that barely mentioned the subject of the conference. Instead, Schwarzenegger spoke at length about the recent history of physical infrastructure politics, laying out a large need — only some of which was addressed last year with the Big Bang Bonds — talking up public-private partnerships and calling for passage of the water bonds package he is still trying to negotiate with state Senate leader Don Perata. He said, predictably, that they “are very close” to an agreement. Use an air horn when you’ve got that agreement, gang.

** WITH ANNAPOLIS TALKS UNDERWAY, BUSH CALLS FOR PALESTINIAN STATE. The one-day Israeli/Palestinian peace conference hosted by the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland is underway, with President George W. Bush calling for a Palestinian state. “There is a battle for the Middle East underway,” he says, and the extremists must not be allowed to win. Actually, of course, they’re doing better than before.

Most experts expect little from this conference. Perhaps most noteworthy is that Saudi Arabia and Syria are participating. But the Saudi foreign minister won’t shake Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s hand. This is the nature of progress in the mostly intractable Middle East.

** SCHWARZENEGGER LIVE WEBCAST THIS MORNING ON DIGITAL FUTURE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger delivers the opening remarks this morning at a conference on the emerging digital infrastructure sponsored by the USC Annenberg School for Communication’s Center for the Digital Future. The event is webcast live at 9 AM.

Bill Clinton is back in Iowa to try to help his wife eke out a win there.

** BILL CLINTON TO THE RESCUE TODAY IN IOWA. As I mentioned in the Monday Morning Quarterback, with rival Barack Obama getting up what looks like a head of steam in first-in-the-nation Iowa, national frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s campaign has once again imported former President Bill Clinton.

The ex-prez never actually ran there in the presidential caucuses. In 1992, he avoided them, believing that Iowa Senator Tom Harkin had a lock. In 1996, he was the incumbent president, and didn’t have a race. But he is very popular in Iowa, and has three times before campaigned there for extended stretches of time to bolster the former first lady’s slipping hold on the Hawkeye State.

Clinton is an enormous asset for his wife’s campaign. Recent polling indicates that he is the most popular politician in the country, and he would likely be elected president again were it constitutionally permissible. But he is also a doubled-edged sword, in that his presence reminds of various scandals, personal and political, that surrounded the couple in the presidential years. And he is such a strong presence that he raises questions among many about who would actually be in charge in a Hillary Clinton Administration. I think she would be, but I’m not a representative focus group of Americans.

** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.

You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.

While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.

** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Crude oil is trading in a range of $94 to $95 per barrel. This is the second day of declines in the oil market. Saudi Arabia has increased its production to the highest level this year.

Your posts are welcome in the Forum.

Another exiled ex-prime minister has returned to Pakistan, but
the troubled nation’s media crackdown continues.

** KEY MOVES COMING IN PAKISTAN CRISIS. Former Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, both now returned from exile, are slated to meet later this week to discuss their next moves. They’re not really allies, of course, as one is much more the secularist liked by the West and the other a more religious figure backed by the Saudis. Their mutual interest is that they are both opposed to President Pervez Musharraf, who says he will at last step down as army chief of staff on Wednesday and then be sworn in as a civilian president on Thursday.

If Sharif and Bhutto both boycott the elections Musharraf has rescheduled for January, the elections will lack legitimacy and Musharraf will be in even deeper trouble, perhaps bait for a military coup. Which would probably need a civilian face. But whose? If they join forces and contest the election, they could win. But then who would be in charge? If one contests the election and the other boycotts, well … It’s too bad that the apparent US plan of forging a Musharraf-Bhutto alliance in Pakistan — America’s key frontline ally in the Terror War and the only Islamic nuclear power — is in tatters. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden is reportedly about to issue another message.

** NO PUFFS OF WHITE SMOKE OVER THE CALIFORNIA CAPITOL. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has been in private discussions about his still pending agenda today in Sacramento, and is now in a “Big 5″ meeting with Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines, and Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman. That meeting is focused on water policy. But nothing is emerging on water or health care reform so far today. Not surprisingly.

Meanwhile, earlier today, also unsurprisingly, Schwarzenegger announced that he has signed the ballot arguments promoting four Indian casino tribe gambling compacts that appear on next February’s ballot. Unsurprising because these compacts represent deals he negotiated with the tribes, which were in turn ratified by the Legislature. They’re up for a public vote because a couple of rival tribes, along with some horse racing interests and the hotel and restaurant workers union — for a variety of reasons — want the deals undone and gathered enough signatures to place four referenda on the ballot to try to do just that. Thus suspending the implementation of the compacts in the interim, which also has the effect of depriving the state of anticipated revenue from the deals.

Joining Schwarzenegger as official ballot sponsors of the gambling compacts is state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell, a Democrat, and Gene Gantt of the California Fire Chiefs Association. Signing the ballot argument against the compacts are California Federation of Teachers president Marty Hittelman, John Gomez of the American Indian Rights and Resources Organization, and Lenny Goldberg of the California Tax Reform Association.

** OIL PRICE EASES SOME ON SIGNS OF INCREASED OPEC PRODUCTION. After shooting over $99 per barrel, near a record high, earlier in the day, crude oil closed today at $97.67 per barrel. According to Bloomberg News, there are signs of increased OPEC production. Saudi Arabia seems to have increased production about 5%, and Iraq’s oil production, with the immediate threat of a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq abated, is up as well.

The Saudis, incidentally, along with Syria, will be at the Israeli/Palestinian peace conference tomorrow at Annapolis. Saudi Arabia is increasingly injecting itself into various hot Middle East-related situations.

** OBAMA AND CLINTON ROCK AND ROLL IN IOWA. Hillary Clinton jabbed at Barack Obama last week about his seemingly thin foreign policy experience. “Now voters will judge whether living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next president will face,” Clinton said. Clinton belittles Obama’s notion that spending part of his youth growing up in Indonesia, and having a father from Kenya, has relevance as far as being president in today’s world.

Obama has just fired fired back in an interview with ABC News for tonight’s Nightline. “You know, we must be doing pretty well in Iowa. She wasn’t paying much attention to what I said before then.

“I think the fact of the matter is that Sen. Clinton is claiming basically the entire eight years of the Clinton presidency as her own, except for the stuff that didn’t work out, in which case she says she has nothing to do with it. There is no doubt that Bill Clinton had faith in her and consulted with her on issues, in the same way that I would consult with Michelle, if there were issues,” Obama said. “On the other had, I don’t think Michelle would claim that she is the best qualified person to be a United States Senator by virtue of me talking to her on occasion about the work I’ve done.”

Incidentally, there is a new Zogby poll that shows Clinton trailing all the major Republican candidates, while Obama and Edwards lead all the Republicans. But I don’t buy the poll. For it is not a Zogby telephone poll, it’s an online poll, with a group that has self-selective qualities. As longtime readers know, I don’t buy online polls and I don’t buy robo-polls.

** SCHWARZENEGGER CONFERS PRIVATELY WITH LEGISLATIVE LEADERS. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in California’s Capitol today for private discussions with legislative leaders on still unresolved water policy and health care issues.

Coming into the week, the situations remained in the very familiar status quo, which I can either write about repetitively, or not.

On water, Schwarzenegger, Republicans, and some Democrats want more water storage, above and below the ground. Most Democrats are either opposed to dams or are skeptical. An almost deal last week between Schwarzenegger and state Senate leader Don Perata foundered, as it were, over the dam issue. Would the Legislature get to vote every year — in a vote requiring two-thirds — to keep appropriating funds for dams? That would be a relatively easy way to stall dam construction.

On health care, legislative Republicans are out of it and it’s between Schwarzenegger, who wants all Californians to be required to buy health insurance, and Democrats, who are skeptical about that. Their hang-up, if you will? That health insurance is increasingly expensive and that a mandate will both force people already struggling to spend a huge chunk of their income on the insurance and further drive up the cost of that insurance. So the compromise efforts have centered around a complex series of measures to mitigate the expense through various subsidies.

** PAKISTAN CRISIS: MUSHARRAF TO STEP DOWN AS ARMY CHIEF WEDNESDAY, BE INAUGURATED AS CIVILIAN PRESIDENT THURSDAY. President Pervez Musharraf says he will resign as the chief of staff of Pakistan’s military on Wednesday in advance of his swearing in as president on Thursday. A new supreme court, packed with Musharraf loyalists after the old one was dissolved under his “emergency” rule, certified his election last week.

Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returned to Pakistan yesterday, greeted by adoring crowds in his home base of Lahore. Musharraf ousted him eight years ago, sending him into exile in Saudi Arabia. But Sharif has returned under Saudi sponsorship. He and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto both filed papers today to run in an election now scheduled for January. But both say they will likely boycott the election if Musharraf continues his rollback of democracy in Pakistan, which includes a media crackdown.

Can Bhutto and Sharif form a working alliance? Bhutto is more the secularist, while the Saudi-sponsored Sharif is more religious. Sharif reportedly once tried to have himself declared “commander of the faithful.”

** OPRAH HITS THE ROAD FOR OBAMA NEXT MONTH. Oprah Winfrey will campaign with Barack Obama next month, hitting three key early states the weekend after next.

On December 9th, she’ll campaign with the Illinois senator in Iowa. On December 10th, she’ll campaign with him in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Polling shows that Winfrey is by far the best celebrity endorsement to have. She’s especially popular with women, who are the core of Hillary Clinton’s support. Whether she can shake some of that support loose is the question.

** TRENT LOTT RESIGNS. Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, the number two Republican in the Senate, is going to resign at the end of the year. This makes him part of an exodus of six Republicans senators. The others are not seeking re-election. Why resign now? CNN says it’s because a new law is about to go into effect barring lobbying by former senators for two years. The current law has only a one-year ban.

Governor Haley Barbour, a former Republican National Chairman, is expected to pick among the state’s Republican congressmen. Who might run on the Democratic side? The most popular Democrat in the state is former state Attorney General Mike Moore, who you may recall from Michael Mann’s award-winning film The Insider on whistle-blowing and the tobacco industry. Moore won big suing the tobacco industry.

** STATING THE OBVIOUS: L.A. TIMES SAYS VILLARAIGOSA NO LONGER FRONTRUNNER FOR GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA. The Los Angeles Times reports today that LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is no longer the frontrunner for governor in 2010. While I like Villaraigosa, as longtime readers know I didn’t think he was the frontrunner. He certainly wasn’t in polls.

** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.

You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.

While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.

** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Crude oil is trading in a range of $97 to $99 per barrel.

Your posts are welcome in the Forum.

Hillary Clinton says she’s running against “the Republican attack machine”
with the “strength to fight and the experience to lead.”

After a brief respite for Thanksgiving, the presidential campaign this week is back with growing combat in both parties. With next month’s CBS-hosted California debate imperiled by the Writers Guild strike, the focus is increasingly on Iowa, though Republicans will debate on Thursday in Florida on CNN.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is attacking Barack Obama, who’s taken a lead over her in Iowa. Obama and John Edwards are attacking Hillary. She’ll get help on Tuesday from her husband the former president, who descends once again on Iowa to try to transfer his greater popularity there to hers and help her regain a lead, as he’s done in the past.

On the Republican side, Fred Thompson attacked Fox News on Sunday for, in his view, having it in for him. Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney are attacking one another, and Giuliani is taking some swats at Thompson, who has some strength in the South, for good measure as a closet centrist. John McCain is after Romney.

And the surging Mike Huckabee, closing in on the lead in Iowa, is attacking the Saudis, for fostering US oil dependency and financing jihadist terrorism.

Barack Obama has built a small lead in Iowa, 30% to 26% over Hillary Clinton, with John Edwards still strong in third at 22% in a Washington Post/ABC News poll. Now that he has a lead in Iowa, Obama hopes to sustain and consolidate, maintaing his new generation/new ideas appeal and reassuring about his experience level. Which is still definitely on the thin side.

Knowing that the big dog, former President Clinton himself, is coming in once again, Obama over the weekend said that when he smoked marijuana, he inhaled. It will be interesting to see if Bill Clinton, who famously claimed he tried pot but never inhaled, takes that bait.

The spin is coming fast and furious. A Clinton spokesman sought to lowball expectations in Iowa, saying: “Our definition of success doesn’t necessarily mean coming in first.”

Meanwhile, Senator Clinton herself is attacking Obama for his lack of foreign policy experience and for having a universal health care program that is not so universal. Unlike Clinton, Obama would not require everyone to buy health insurance.

If Clinton can win in Iowa, her national frontrunnership will be affirmed. But if she loses, the floodgates of doubt about her will open, and the victor will be seen as freshly charismatic and an enormous media magnet. So to stave off that distinct possibility, Clinton has moved about a hundred staffers from elsewhere in the country into the Hawkeye State. And her husband is back this week for the latest in what will prove to be many stints there.

Hillary is still somewhat measuredly mocking Obama for citing his childhood in Indonesia as an example of his global experience. She has to convince that she has the right blend of change orientation and skilled experience to defeat the Republicans and serve as an effective president.

Obama and Edwards and others will work to undermine her experience angle, which rests more on her tenure as first lady than it does on her seven years in the US Senate, pointing out that none of her papers from the era have been made available to buttress her argument. She’ll keep trying to fend off Democratic criticism of her as “repeating Republican talking points.”

The happy trio, joined by the rest of the Democratic field, meet up again for another forum/debate in Des Moines at the end of the week. This event, focusing on black and Latino issues — intriguing, given the lack of blacks and Latinos in Iowa — will be on Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban’s HD Net.

On the Republican side, Giuliani, who actually is a Republican candidate, will continue to find ways to work Hillary into his campaigning against his Republican opponents, as a not so subtle reminder that, on paper at least, he is the most electable Republican. He’s going after Romney this week on his fiscal policies as Massachusetts governor and for his health care plan which, like Hillary’s, requires the purchase of health insurance.

Meanwhile, a candidate running on a shoestring has rocketed into major contention. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has tripled his support in Iowa since the summer and now runs only four points behind Mitt Romney in the latest ABC/Washington Post poll of the first-in-the-nation Iowa Republican presidential caucuses.

Romney leads Huckabee, 28% to 24%, with Fred Thompson at 15% and Rudy Giuliani at 13%. Huckabee’s supporters are more enthusiastic than those of any other Republican candidate and much more likely to stick with their man. But the guitar-playing former preacher, who has been vastly outspent by Romney, is drawing from a narrower spectrum of voters. Can he expand beyond it? Does he need to in a splintered field?

Huckabee was on the BBC World News just before Thanksgiving, fielding questions from a correspondent frankly concerned, as she put it, that America might have another administration devoted to pursuing a Christian religious agenda in world affairs. Accepting the premise of her questioning, Huckabee, who apparently does not believe in the theory of evolution, said that he’s not that kind of Christian, and that there would be “no crusade” by a Huckabee Administration.

Even Ron Paul is showing a measure of strength, creeping up into the mid to high single digits in Nevada and New Hampshire and, more impressively, now raising a great deal of money. Word is that he’s raised $9 million already in this quarter, with a goal of $12 million.

While the Democratic race is currently a race between two, possibly three candidates, the Republican race is more topsy turvy. Romney leads in Iowa and New Hampshire, but Huckabee is a major threat in the first-in-the-nation contest. The veteran McCain hopes to pull off a New Hampshire upset, especially if Huckabee wins Iowa. Giuliani wants to stay relevant early and blunt anyone else from challenging Romney in New Hampshire, but Florida is his first big firewall before California and other big states he expects to win on February 5th. Thompson has faded badly in New Hampshire but hopes to be strong in South Carolina and other Southern states. …

You can read the rest of Monday Morning Quarterback on PJ Media.

Your posts are welcome in the Forum.

Following his hair’s breadth election the night before,
President-elect John F. Kennedy arrives at the Hyannis Armory
and delivers his victory remarks on November 9, 1960.

NOTE: When updates occur, they will be below the main article.

** THANKSGIVING WEEKEND. AND AN ANNIVERSARY. Happy Thanksgiving to all! There is much for which to be thankful, and so on and so forth. Or, as the governor of California might put it, “and all that stuff.”

This year’s rather early Thanksgiving happened to fall on a date of more than a little import in American history. Fourty-four years ago, on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Which may make Arnold Schwarzenegger’s holiday celebration with the in-laws back East somewhat bittersweet.

You’ve seen much video of JFK over the years. He’s become one of the iconic figures in American history. For decades, Democratic presidential hopefuls, like the Republicans of today, yearned to be seen as “a new JFK.” Though his politics, which I think of as tough liberalism, haven’t been much in vogue throughout the period.

The video above hasn’t been seen much. It shows Kennedy, the morning after his hair’s breadth election over then Vice President Richard Nixon in November 1960, arriving at the armory in Hyannisport, Massachusetts and delivering his victory remarks.

It’s clearly an earlier, and probably better, time. The press and public are closer in to the politician. The imperial presidency was still in the future, as was today’s imperial campaign.

Of course, Kennedy’s assassination has something to do with the distancing. Although in many ways, security is simply an excuse for control.

A word about Kennedy’s politics, that tough liberalism. Which to some seems an oxymoron. It didn’t then.

Extravagant claims are made on the right and left about JFK’s legacy. Some on the right insist that if Kennedy were president today, he’d be George W. Bush. Others, on the left, claim that he was really a closet peacenik, that he would have ended the Cold War with Communism decades earlier.

Well. Bush, whatever his merits, would certainly not have promoted the production, as Kennedy did, of movies like The Manchurian Candidate, a sardonic thriller, starring JFK’s buddy Frank Sinatra, which posits a Joe McCarthy-style anti-Communist demagogue as an agent of a Communist conspiracy to take over the US. Or Seven Days In May, another thriller, in which a cabal of disgruntled generals and conservative pols tries a military coup against a president who negotiated a disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. Kennedy urged the production of both movies, providing White House support.

Much is made of the fearful attitude of this post-9/11 era. And there is much to be fearful about. Islamic jihadists are determined foes of modernity. But the Cold War, which got very hot on occasion, was a much more fearful time. And unless the jihadists take over the Islamic world, their true goal, or obtain and are allowed to use actual weapons of mass destruction, their threat is significantly less than that of the old Soviet Union and its allies around the world. Who, after all, placed their allies in command of nations around the world (including less than a hundred miles from the US) and had the power to destroy America many times over. Compared to the skill and resources of the Soviet Empire, Al Qaeda and company are pretentious bumblers, as Lawrence Wright’s excellent, Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11,” much praised by some conservatives, makes clear.

Without rehashing the entire Cold War, much less the particulars of the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Vietnam, which was at relatively low counter-insurgency levels when Kennedy was assassinated — think less than a tenth of the current US role in Iraq — it seems obvious that Kennedy would not embrace either the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld doctrines of today’s right-wing or the “let’s treat Islamic jihadist terrorism as a law enforcement issue” mode of many on the left. The challenges posed by Islamic jihadism will require decades of vigilance and aggressive containment.

I strongly suspect that Kennedy would reject Cheney and Rumsfeld’s “one percent solution” (if there’s a one percent chance of something happening, act like it’s real) just as he would reject John Edwards’ line about the Terror War being a mere “bumper sticker.”

But enough of that. Enjoy the video from an earlier and perhaps better time. Though I don’t like the cars so much. Or the hats.

11/25 ** UPDATE: A DIFFICULT THANKSGIVING FOR SCHWARZENEGGER. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will wrap up a notably bittersweet Thanksgiving holiday this afternoon by touring the big Malibu fire. What caused this latest problem, which has burnt thousands of acres and destroyed about 50 homes? A combination of high winds, dry conditions due to drought, and a development pattern of nestling houses amidst a lot of trees and shrubbery.

In addition, Schwarzenegger’s mother-in-law, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, has been hospitalized since November 18th. The Special Olympics founder and sister of the late John F. Kennedy is in fair condition. Confounding casual expectations, the former action superstar is actually quite close to his mother-in-law. Schwarzenegger also had to deal with the death of his old mentor/idol, former Mr. Universe Reg Park. (See item below and lengthy quote from my 2002 profile of Schwarzenegger.) And, of course, Thanksgiving Day this year fell on the anniversary of the JFK assassination.

** STRUGGLING CALIFORNIA REPUBLICANS CUT ORGANIZING. The current incarnation of the California Republican Party, whose woes were unveiled months ago on NWN, has just had another big setback. It’s had to cut its local organizing efforts because it doesn’t have the money for this basic operation. As the AP reports — they have a staff which works on holidays — the county executive directors program has been eliminated.

11/24 ** UPDATE: HOWARD OUSTED IN OZ. Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a close conservative ally of President George W. Bush, was defeated Friday in his bid for another term as prime minister of Australia. Kevin Rudd led a strong victory for the Labor Party down under.

Howard also became only the second prime minister in Australian history to lose his own seat in parliament.

Rudd promised repeatedly during his campaign to immediately sign the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. This will leave the US as the only advanced industrialized nation still on the sidelines with regard to the greenhouse effect. Rudd will also pull Australian combat troops out of Iraq. (Which is more symbolic than anything, since there are only about 600 Aussie combat troops there, with about a thousand, who will remain, at least for now, in security and support roles.)

Australia may put more troops into Afghanistan, where things aren’t going all that well, given America’s preoccupation with the current military effort to stabilize the Iraqi security situation as a precursor to a political settlement.

Howard was best known in the US for three things: His close alliance with Bush in resisting anti-climate change efforts and promoting the Iraq War, and for saying right after Barack Obama declared his presidential candidacy early this year that Al Qaeda should pray for victory by Obama and the Democrats.

** UPDATE: CLINTON SPOKESMAN LOWBALLS IOWA OUTCOME. “Our definition of success doesn’t necessarily mean coming in first.”

11/23 ** UPDATE: SCHWARZENEGGER’S ORIGINAL IDOL/MENTOR DIES. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, celebrating Thanksgiving with his Kennedy and Shriver family in-laws on the bittersweet date of November 22nd, got some bad news yesterday. His old idol and mentor, Reg Park, died of cancer at age 79. Here is what Schwarzenegger said when I profiled him in 2002:

“As with everything,” he said, “you have those visions and those goals, and the closer you get the more you feel like, ‘Oh, it is within reach.’ I had this guy, Reg Park, who was my idol.

“And I remember the things that I saw in the magazines, him as a family man with all his children and his beautiful wife, and I thought, ‘Well, that’s cool,’ that’s where this whole thing goes. He had this gymnasium empire in South Africa, which in those days was 10 gymnasiums. Nowadays you would franchise 500 or something like this. He gave lectures at universities, and I read that as a kid at the age of 14 and thought, ‘Wow, this is unbelievable.’ And he won Mr. Universe. And he made movies, where he took the money and then built the gymnasiums. So that whole thing was like . . . I said to myself, ‘So this is all from working out? And becoming Mr. Universe? I’m in. This is it.’ It was not just Mr. Universe, it was the package. ‘If I could copy that, I will be home free.’ I was 13, 14 years old, you know. So I went after that. So of course I knew the steppingstones that he took: Mr. Universe. Then getting into movies. Then investing in business.”

** UPDATE: GOVERNMENT INCREASINGLY TRACKING CELL PHONES WITHOUT PROBABLE CAUSE. The Washington Post reports that government agencies are increasingly using cell phone tracking technology without demonstrating any probable cause of criminal activity. One of the inventors of tracking technology, which has well-known benign purposes, is California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.

This new mini-episode of Doctor Who just aired in the
UK for the annual “Children In Need” benefit.

** A FUNNY, NOSTALGIC NEW DOCTOR WHO. Doctor What, you may say.

The video clip above just aired in the UK as part of the annual “Children In Need” benefit. In case you’re not part of the large international cult of the show, the British Doctor Who is the longest-running TV drama in the world.

It launched, as fate would have it, on November 23, 1963, the day after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Like the Beatles and Bond, also products of that very fearful and, post-JFK assassination, depresssed time, Doctor Who was quickly embraced as a symbol of zany and mostly optimistic modernism. It ran continuously from 1963 to 1989 and then, after taking a break marked by some movies and specials, and continuing radio dramas, came back in full force as a regular series again in 2005. (The American TV response to the era was a little show called Star Trek, essentially JFK’s “New Frontier” in space.)

The titular character, whose name is not Doctor Who, is known simply as “the Doctor.” Although he’s a Brit, of course, he’s actually an immortal extraterrestrial with two hearts. Who is otherwise a Brit, aside from having an encyclopedic knowledge of history and science. Not that Brits don’t of course … (The show began as a mostly children’s show, to teach them history and science, but was quickly embraced by adults and later became the most violent show on British television.)

The Doctor travels about the universe, through time and space, usually with a comely young companion, by means of a time ship called the TARDIS (for time and relative dimensions in space). Which is in the shape of a blue police box, naturally much bigger on the inside than the outside. Police boxes, in those stone knives-and-bearskins days of communications, were kiosk-style call boxes which police officers used to make phone calls.

The Doctor, incidentally, regenerates from time to time. Which accounts for the role being recast, as it would have to be over 44 years. There’ve been ten Doctors so far. In the seven-minute mini-episode above, the current Doctor, number 10 (portrayed by the very amusing David Tennant), encounters the fifth Doctor (portrayed by Peter Davison, who had the role from 1981-84).

The show is clever and fun, its repartee can come fast and furious. And usually a bit tongue-in-cheek. As you’ll see in this nostalgic mini-episode.

** QUICK HITS. As I mentioned in Wednesday’s Forum section, the New Hampshire presidential primary will be on January 8th. By far the earliest in history, guaranteeing that presidential candidates will, quite ludicrously, be campaigning throughout the holidays. Hey, at least it’s not in December. … The Republican group trying to change the presidential outcome next year by switching California’s — and nowhere else’s — Electoral College vote from winner-take-all to by-congressional district, has reported raising $1.2 million so far for the effort. Which still seems low for how many signatures they need to gather. Which, incidentally, they should be turning in now. Or if not now, awfully soon if they hope to qualify for California’s June ballot in order to influence the presidential election in November without an obvious court challenge. The initiative, as I’ve pointed out, starts out under 50% support level. But there’s some money to be made. … The new national Zogby poll for Reuters shows a closer race on the Democratic side and mostly status quo on the Republican side. Hillary Clinton’s big lead has shrunk on the Democratic side, while on the Republican side, Rudy Giuliani is still the clear leader with a bunch of others bunched below. Here are the numbers. Among the Dems, Clinton continues to lead with 38% support, with Obama at 27% and John Edwards at 13%. On the Republican side, Giuliani leads with 29%, followed by Fred Thompson at 15%, the emerging Mike Huckabee at 11%, Mitt Romney at 9%, and John McCain at 9%.

** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.

You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.

While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.

** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Crude oil is trading in a range of $97 to $99 per barrel.

Your posts are welcome in the Forum.

Social conservative Mike Huckabee, coming on strong in Iowa,
with action movie star Chuck Norris.

** HAPPY PRE-THANKSGIVING. I hope that everyone drives/flies/snorkels safely in this run-up to a holiday weekend. NWN will have a special Thanksgiving Edition, with commemorative videos you will enjoy, but publishing will, for the most part, be on an as-needed basis. As in … “What?! This must be written about.”

** HUCKABEE CLOSE BEHIND ROMNEY IN IOWA. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has tripled his support in Iowa since the summer and now runs only four points behind Mitt Romney in the latest ABC/Washington Post poll of the first-in-the-nation Iowa Republican presidential caucuses.

Romney leads Huckabee, 28% to 24%, with Fred Thompson at 15% and Rudy Giuliani at 13%. Huckabee’s supporters are more enthusiastic than those of any other Republican candidate and much more likely to stick with their man. But the guitar-playing former preacher, who has been vastly outspent by Romney, is drawing from a narrower spectrum of voters. Can he expand beyond it? Does he need to in a splintered field?

Huckabee certainly has a winning personality. He was on the BBC World News yesterday fielding questions from a correspondent frankly concerned, as she put it, that America might have another administration devoted to pursuing a Christian religious agenda in world affairs.

Accepting the premise of her questioning, Huckabee said that he’s not that kind of Christian, and that there would be “no crusade” by a Huckabee Administration. The correspondent seemed impressed with Huckabee’s matter-of-factness about it, and in the rest of the interview he laid out a compelling personal story.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side …

Barack Obama, seen in this behind-the-scenes NWN video, has
built a narrow lead in Iowa. That’s San Francisco District Attorney
Kamala Harris on the right.

** THE OBAMA CHALLENGE. Barack Obama has built a small lead in Iowa, 30% to 26% over Hillary Clinton, with John Edwards still strong in third at 22%. People are still wondering over the weekend dust-up between Obama and Clinton over conservative columnist Bob Novak’s rather vague report of her camp having personally scandalous information about the Illinois senator but choosing not reveal it.

In his brand new effort, just out this morning to subscribers and not yet on the Net, Novak claims the episode is evidence of “Hillary’s Nixonian tactics.” It could be evidence of quite a few things, as discussed.

Now that he has a lead in Iowa, Obama hopes to sustain and consolidate, maintaing his new generation/new ideas appeal and reassuring about his experience level. Which is still definitely on the thin side.

Hillary Clinton, surrounded by California politicians in this NWN
video, is trying to protect her frontrunner’s mantle with an Iowa win.

** THE CLINTON CHALLENGE. If Clinton can win in Iowa, her national frontrunnership will be affirmed. But if she loses, the floodgates of doubt about her will open, and the victor will be seen as freshly charismatic and an enormous media magnet.

So to stave off that distinct possibility, Clinton has moved about a hundred staffers from elsewhere in the country into the Hawkeye State. And her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who is quite popular there — more popular than any of the candidates — will be doing substantial campaigning there.

Clinton has begun mocking Obama’s lack of foreign policy experience. She has to convince that she has the right blend of change orientation of skilled experience to defeat the Republicans and serve as an effective president.

Obama and Edwards and others will work to undermine her experience angle, which rests more on her tenure as first lady than it does on her seven years in the US Senate, pointing out that none of her papers from the era have been made available to buttress her argument.

** NO ALTERNATIVE BUDGET FROM THE RIGHT. With California’s chronic state budget woes back in full force, some conservatives in the state Senate are saying I told you so. Actually, they didn’t. For months they complained about the budget situation, but never put forth any alternatives. As a matter of “strategy,” as the hyperpartisan Flash Report web site spun it.

Yesterday, state Senate Republican leader Dick Ackerman put out a statement along those lines, but this time presented what sounded like an alternative. Some “$3 billion” in programs to be cut. The current problem looks like about $10 billion, a $2 billion shortfall in the current budget, and a projected $8 billion in the next fiscal year.

Ackerman touted something called the California Piglet Book, put out by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. But I’ve been down this particular road before, a few years ago when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger decided not to impose a temporary tax increase to actually balance the budget. I went to the group to hear their alternatives. Which were pretty much what you will see when you click on the book, which is actually a pamphlet. It’s a collection of cullings from various newspapers and other media outlets with examples of seemingly egregious government spending. It’s all mashed together, from all levels of government, not simply state government.

To say that it’s not a program is, as you’ll see, to state the obvious. And the $3 billion in it that Ackerman cites as a solution to the budget woes is a result of all that mashed together spending. Which, in any event, is only a fraction of the problem.

** QUICK HITS. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger induced four big lenders to agree to halt proposed rate increases on so-called subprime mortgages for homeowners in need, a move that appears likely to save tens of thousands of Californians from losing their homes. … California water policy negotiators still haven’t come to an actual agreement, despite the talk from all camps of progress. They’ll keep negotiating, but it looks too late to place a big water bond on the February ballot. This is why I’m weary of reporting various Capitol machinations, which usually come to nothing. … Two competing initiatives to reform the state’s eminent domain procedures look likely to make it onto the June California ballot. One has a stealthy backdoor provision to outlaw rent control. Prospects for neither initiative are good.

** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.

You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.

While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.

** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Crude oil prices are trading in a record range of $97 to $100 per barrel.

Your posts are welcome in the Forum.

While the Pakistan crisis continues to play out, nearby Bangladesh
sorts itself out following a devastating heavy weather event.

** OPRAH TO CAMPAIGN FOR OBAMA, HILLARY HITS OBAMA. Billionaire mega-talk show host Oprah Winfrey, perhaps the most powerful black woman in the world, will hit the campaign trail for Barack Obama. She’s going to Iowa, where Obama has eked out a narrow lead over Hillary Clinton, first.

Polling shows that she is easily the best celebrity endorsement to have, followed by Tom Hanks and George Clooney. Clooney, star of the summer hit Ocean’s Thirteen, which featured an amusing scene centering on his character’s and the character played by Brad Pitt’s secret affection for Oprah’s daytime talk show, is also an Obama backer.

Meanwhile, Clinton hit Obama today in Iowa, saying he’s too inexperienced to be president.

** BETTER POLL RESULTS FOR CALIFORNIA TERM LIMITS CHANGE INITIATIVE, ACCORDING TO THE CAMPAIGN’S INTERNAL POLL. Pollster Jan van Lohuizen, who has worked for many Republican campaigns, including Arnold Schwarzenegger’s, as well as the teachers union, has conducted a poll for the proponents of Proposition 93 on the February presidential primary ballot. The initiative would, as we’ve discussed, cut the total number of years that can be served in the Legislature from 14 to 12, but allow all those years to be served in one house, and allow some current legislators to be grandfathered in. Using the language that will appear on the ballot, van Lohuizen’s poll shows the initiative currently leading, 55% to 30%.

Among Democrats, it’s ahead, 52% to 35%. Among independents, it leads, 51% to 33%. And among Republicans, it has an even bigger margin, 62% to 25%.

The Republican Party, of course, is opposed to the initiative, and Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, a Republican who backed Al Gore for president and invented cell phone tracking technology, has put in $1.5 million against it, as has the somewhat mysterious DC-based US Term Limits group, which does not disclose its contributors.

According to van Lohuizen’s poll, a plurality of California voters don’t think the current version of term limits is working very well. 64% say it’s “problematic that the time required to pass a budget has doubled since term limits passed.”

Despite all the back and forth in the political press and among insiders, only 25% of California voters are aware that this initiative will be on the ballot.

Which indicates that there is an opportunity to pass the measure. Of course, in my view, it would have a better chance were it paired with some other political reforms, such as the long promised redistricting reform, to further dispel the obvious attack against it that it is designed to benefit the political class, despite the poll’s finding that only 16% find the argument that Prop 93 is “a scam written by the legislators themselves” to be “very convincing.”

** NEW RECORD OIL PRICE. Crude oil hit a new record today, closing for the first time at over $98 per barrel.

** STILL NO NEW HAMPSHIRE PRIMARY DATE. Somewhat amazingly, New Hampshire still has not set its primary date. The Granite State prides itself on being the first primary, following Iowa (January 3rd) as the first caucus. After some frankly suicidal talk about going in December — which would kill New Hampshire in the future — it’s now purportedly waiting on Michigan. Which wants to go on January 15th, but has to survive a case in its Supreme Court. And the pledge of all Democratic candidates not to campaign there. (All but Hillary Clinton have removed their names from the ballot.)

** NO NUKE INITIATIVE. The Sierra Club reports that a California initiative to promote a new generation of nuclear power has been withdrawn. The initiative, promoted by right-wing state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, has fallen flat due to lack of funding and inadequate signature gathering.

This is what I was hearing early on, from sources around the state attorney general. And that the nuclear power industry did not want to be fronted by DeVore, who is one of the most ideological members of a very hyperpartisan state Legislature.

The initiative would have repealed the California Nuclear Safeguards Act of 1976, which essentially blocks new nuclear power plants in California until the waste issue has a permanent solution.

** CALIFORNIA WATER PROGRESS? I’m hearing again, and the Capitol Weekly is reporting at length, that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislative leaders are close to a deal on a $10 billion water bond for next February’s presidential primary ballot. It would be about $10 billion, and would include money for both surface and groundwater storage.

Of course, I’ve heard this many times before. And late last week, a top aide to Senate leader Don Perata, the Democrats’ point man on water policy, tossed cold, er, water on the notion that a deal was close.

Since California is into semi-permanent drought status, it would be good to have a deal on something so basic. But, as usual, we’ll see.

** NWN THROTTLING BACK. Noticing that people are increasingly not around/not paying attention to politics in this Thanksgiving week — and, frankly, increasingly not around myself — New West Notes is throttling back for the holiday. I decided to postpone a piece on Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gray Davis, the recall, California’s chronic economic/budget woes, and Jerry Brown, with accompanying NWN videos, till next week.

There’s also an announcement coming, of a new joint project with the Huffington Post, but that’s best left in its entirety till next week as well.

There’s really not much going on in California politics, which has been true for some time, although it’s possible to generate product if one is so inclined, and presidential politics is also quieting down some as well.

Which is not to say that there won’t be NWN reports.

And you will love the Thanksgiving videos.

** PAKISTAN FREES THOUSANDS OF POLITICAL PRISONERS. BUT STILL NO SIGN OF COALITION GOVERNMENT. The martial law regime of President and Army Chief of Staff Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan, the only Islamic nuclear power, has just freed 3000 political prisoners. Thousands more remain, of course, but this is a positive sign. Still, Pentagon sources tell NWN that there is as yet no clear sign that Musharraf will accept a coalition government in this latest mutation of America’s ongoing crisis in the Islamic world. Musharraf still enjoys the backing of the military, the principal modernizing influence in the nation cobbled together after Britain freed India and partitioned the mega-state in the 1940s, but his legitimacy as Pakistan’s head of state is now quite limited.

Meanwhile, Musharraf “balanced” the release of political prisoners by arresting scores of journalists, according to other reports I’ve received. You see where this is going.

** DEM INSIDERS’ WEB SITE HANDICAPS 2010 CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR’S RACE. The California Majority Report, published by ranking Democratic strategists/consultants Steve Maviglio, Jason Kinney, and Roger Salazar, has issued a roster of favorites for the governorship of California in 2010. They focus on the Democrats, as befits a mostly blue state for a year in which the Republicans are highly unlikely to have anyone nearly as potent as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Here’s the list, in rank order:

1. Former Governor-turned-Attorney General Jerry Brown
2. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom
3. Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi
4. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
5. Former state Controller and eBay honcho Steve Westly
6. Treasurer Bill Lockyer
7. Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell
8. Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez
9. U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein
10. Former Treasurer and 2006 Democratic gubernatorial nominee Phil Angelides

There are definitely some folks on that list that I do not believe will run. But, in the words of former Governor Gray Davis, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.

You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.

While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.

** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Crude oil prices have risen back to the $96 to $97 per barrel range with the dollar faling to a record low against the euro.

Your posts are welcome in the Forum.